Unexpected Child Process of macOS Screensaver Engine

Last updated 6 months ago on 2025-02-04
Created 4 years ago on 2021-10-05

About

Identifies when a child process is spawned by the screensaver engine process, which is consistent with an attacker's malicious payload being executed after the screensaver activated on the endpoint. An adversary can maintain persistence on a macOS endpoint by creating a malicious screensaver (.saver) file and configuring the screensaver plist file to execute code each time the screensaver is activated.
Tags
Domain: EndpointOS: macOSUse Case: Threat DetectionTactic: PersistenceData Source: Elastic DefendLanguage: eql
Severity
medium
Risk Score
47
MITRE ATT&CK™

Persistence (TA0003)(opens in a new tab or window)

License
Elastic License v2(opens in a new tab or window)

Definition

Rule Type
Event Correlation Rule
Integration Pack
Prebuilt Security Detection Rules
Index Patterns
logs-endpoint.events.process*
Related Integrations

endpoint(opens in a new tab or window)

Query
process where host.os.type == "macos" and event.type == "start" and process.parent.name == "ScreenSaverEngine"

Install detection rules in Elastic Security

Detect Unexpected Child Process of macOS Screensaver Engine in the Elastic Security detection engine by installing this rule into your Elastic Stack.

To setup this rule, check out the installation guide for Prebuilt Security Detection Rules(opens in a new tab or window).